Ammonia (NH3) is one of the most produced chemical compounds in the world. The global production reached 131M metric tons in 2010 (US Geological Survey 2012). Most of the produced ammonia is used in chemical fertilizers to provide the nitrogen crops need for growing. Ammonia has also been used to produce plastics, synthetic fibers and resins, explosives, and numerous other chemical compounds.
The nitrogen cycle is a process that converts nitrogen between its different chemical forms. Mineralization of nitrogen in organic macromolecules, i.e. conversion of organic nitrogen to ammonium or ammonia, is called ammonification. The release of organic nitrogen as ammonia is a part of the nitrogen cycle, and is performed by ammonifying bacteria.
Ammonification can be utilized to release nitrogen from organic waste materials. For example, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/722,228, incorporated by reference herein in its entirety, discloses a method of ammonification. In the method of the '228 application, organic material present in a medium is contacted with a hydrolytic enzyme to produce a medium comprising hydrolyzed or partially hydrolyzed organic material suitable for microbial fermentation or culture. The fermentation is conducted in the presence of at least one microorganism capable of ammonification. The microorganism can belong, for example, to the genus of Aeromonas, Citrobacter, Clostridium and Entrococcus. The method provided ammonium production rates of up to about 800 mg/liter.
US patent application Publ. No. US20110126455 describes a method for producing an inoculum, which can be used in the mineralization process for producing hydroponics. The inoculum created in the process is able to produce nitrate ion concentrations of up to 400 mg/l and the time required to complete mineralization process is typically 4-8 days.
Thus, there remains a longstanding need in the art for further economical methods for producing ammonia from organic material, e.g., organic waste material.